Coffee Variety Deep Dive: Colombia
In coffee, the variety—or varietal if used as an adjective—tells you what type of coffee cherry the beans come from. If you see Caturra, Heirloom, or Typica written on your bag of coffee, it corresponds to one variety from the few thousands of coffee varieties found around the world. We sat down with Keegan Street of Rooftop Coffee Roasters to narrow things down and dive deep into some of the more common varieties produced in Colombia!
KS: In Antioquia, Castillo and Colombia are the most common varieties by far. These are both hybrids that were developed specifically to address coffee leaf rust, a fungus that kills the leaves of trees which has decimated the coffee production of multiple countries. The Colombia variety was developed in the 80s, and then Castillo emerged as an updated version in the early 2000s. They are both hybrids of the Catimor variety which is a hybrid of Caturra and Timor, Timor being a Robusta-derived variety that has a lot of hearty pest-resistant qualities to it. The idea is that by combining them, you get the good flavour of the Caturra and the resistance of the Timor. In terms of the more boutique varieties, these days we are seeing a lot more Pink Bourbon down in Huila.
One of the more eye-opening things I learned while on my trip to Colombia is that Castillo and Colombia are often required for producers to be considered for loans and financial assistance through the FNC (Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia). The FNC is promoting these varieties super heavily because they want to protect the country’s coffee production, but it can also be a bit frustrating for producers because buyers want Pink Bourbon, Gesha, Sidra, Caturra, etc. For producers, producing these varieties can be risky because they’re exposing themselves to leaf rust and the potential inability to access financial assistance.
However, there are a number of producers who are blazing the path forward to encourage producers to take this risk and level-up their production, like Frank Torres and his apprentice Dayana Rivadeneira (both of whom have been featured in past issues of The Roasters Pack). Dayana, for example, has her plot of Caturra along with a smaller plot of Gesha. But still, when planting new varieties, it takes a minimum of three years before trees can produce cherries, so doing this can basically cut down your revenue by 20% until the trees bear fruit. Mainstay crops like Castillo are stable but they don’t pay very high, so when you’re just barely making ends meet at maximum production, it’s kind of a hard-sell to decide to replace 20% of your crops with Pink Bourbon, for example. But that’s why producers who seek to coach others, like Frank Torres, are so important. At the same time, it’s also important to just appreciate a good Castillo or Colombia, like the ones we featured in Issue #8 of The Roasters Pack! There’s room for both.
